Business of Happy Customers

What business are you really in?

Faces buried in stacks of paper, no one seemed to notice as I walked in and quietly found a seat. It was my first week working on the Prime team at Amazon, and we were meeting to discuss growth, sales, and other key metrics.

Surprising to me at the time, almost all of my team were there including developers, designers, financial staff, and managers. Everyone at Amazon needs to obsess over the metrics.

It was 2009, when Amazon Prime was experiencing explosive growth. The subscription service offered unlimited 2-day shipping and discounted next-day delivery, and our numbers showed people were obsessed. (Prime Video, Prime Music, and photo storage wouldn’t come until later.)

I assumed our metrics discussion would focus primarily on growing our subscriber base. Instead, my manager brought up an unusual segment: customers who had subscribed to Amazon Prime, paid the yearly fee, but hadn’t made a single purchase all year.

Think about that. Amazon Prime was already experiencing massive growth. Most companies would look to capitalize on that momentum and focus solely on acquiring new users. But the Prime team was obsessing over a small percentage of customers who had already joined but weren’t using the service.

These weren’t customers flooding our support lines with complaints. They weren’t a significant revenue drain. The Amazon Prime team put them in focus proactively.

Then I heard ideas I never expected at a retail company: “Let’s just give them their money back before they ask.”

After much discussion, the team landed on something even better: we’d email each person explaining that they hadn’t used the service but had still paid for it. Rather than offer a refund, we’d give them their next year of Amazon Prime free.

The strategy was brilliant.

It showed customers that Amazon cared about providing value, not just extracting fees. The result? It encouraged users to try Amazon Prime, start making purchases again, and completely reframe how they viewed Amazon as a company.

I witnessed a masterful lesson in building delight into a product through business strategy. Delightful experiences don’t just happen in sleek interfaces or clever features—they can exist in refunds, pricing, distribution, and customer retention.

After the meeting, I approached a team member to understand the thinking better. Their response was simple:

“Listen, we’re in the business of happy customers. Happy customers who make purchases.”

That’s when it hit me: Amazon’s products are ultimately a delivery mechanism for delight. Delight happens when your product incorporates something unexpected that shows users you care. It requires product makers to empathize with users’ challenges, concerns, and preferences.

The question isn’t just how to build the next big thing—it’s how to create more happy customers.